


Passenger

by therev



Category: No Country for Old Men (2007), Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-23
Updated: 2009-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 08:17:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therev/pseuds/therev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John meets a woman in a parking lot in Odessa, TX. (SPN/No Country For Old Men crossover)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passenger

**Author's Note:**

> Messing with timelines by a few years.

He met her in a cafe parking lot in Odessa, Texas. It was the car that first caught his attention, an olive green Challenger not far outside the window where he sat, looking new as the day it rolled off the lot. And she sat in it, pretty and plain, looking at something in her lap. She sat in the passenger side but while John ate his lunch he didn't see anyone go or come that should have sat driver. After a while she cried.

"You alright, ma'am?" She was drying her eyes by the time he paid and made his way out to the lot. He'd told himself he wouldn't bother her. He did anyway.

The thing in her lap was a hat, like she'd come from church, and she fingered the lace and didn't look up. "I'm alright," she said.

"You need a hand with anything?"

"No sir, I'm just fine."

He straightened, ran his hand along the hot metal of the roof. It was about one in the afternoon.

"Sure is a good lookin' car," he said and she looked up at him at last, eyes so sad and serious, hard to look at and harder to look away, like a story you know won't end well but you listen anyway.

"It was my daddy's," she said, sniffing, "bought it fore he died back in '72. Momma's kept in the garage since. Ain't hardly been drove."

"It's a shame," he said, shook his head.

Her eyes hardened and he thought she'd turn away but she didn't. "I ain't ashamed for nothin."

"Oh no ma'am," he said quickly, "I only meant it's a shame that she shouldn't be driven for so long. Is all I meant."

"Oh," she said, softened and nodded. Then she did look away, toward the driver's seat and back up at him. "You could set in it if you want."

He shifted his feet, took a half step back. "Well, ma'am," he looked around.

"Ain't nobody else," she said. "I drove myself, I just like this side. For settin."

In the car his knees almost hit the dash but he didn't fuss. She held her hat and after a while he said, "Warm today."

"It is," she said.

"You comin' from church on a Saturday?"

"No," she said, smoothed her skirt, "My momma died. Put her in the ground just this mornin. Old dry loam and gypsum. Wouldn't believe a body could rest in it."

"No ma'am."

"She was tiresome. She would have the world and hell to say about it."

"Yes ma'am."

"I guess I ought not to say that about my momma."

"I couldn't say."

She stared at her hands. He gripped the steering wheel, almost didn't hear her say, "You ever knowed anybody that died?" And when she looked up again he realized just how young she really was.

"A few," he said, tried to smile, but he knew he wasn't very good at it anymore. She put a hand to his face, the dark stubble, the noise of it, and he could see the gesture in the rearview in his periphery, as if watching from afar.

When he turned away she said "You can push the seat back and drive her if you want."  
___

"What's your name," he asked at last, pulling off onto a dirt road she'd pointed out and then beneath a copse of squat trees, clinging to what little life was left them amidst the scrubs and sky and abandoned oil rigs dotting the horizon.

"Carla Jean."

"John Winchester," he put out his hand and she took it politely. "You gotta last name, Carla Jean?"

She took her hand away. After a moment she asked, "You wanna get in the back?"

"Well," he said, but she was already opening the door, then out and sliding into the back seat. She'd left her hat sitting in the passenger side. After a moment her dress joined it and she sat in her slip, hands in her lap.

"That's a nice ring you got, Carla Jean."

She looked at it, twisted it on her finger, then reached for his arm tugged until she held his hand in hers, their rings clinking against one another.

"She pass?" She asked and he shook his head. "Llewellyn was taken from me last year. He never would hurt nobody but that don't stop people from killin a man."

"No, it doesn't."

She pulled his hand to her breast, sat on the edge of the seat to be nearer to him in the front. "I never was with a man before Llewellyn."

In the back seat he shed his shirt, belt, and pulled her slip up over her head where her hair clung to it a bit, and then to the dampness of her forehead, her lips, and tangled in their first kiss before he brushed it gently back and traced her jawline, her neck, her collar bone with his fingers, then his mouth. Her breasts were small, nipples the same pink as her lips and almost as soft. She was quiet, watchful, but the hand that gripped him was not shy and when he came across her belly she said "here" and pushed his shoulders down until he knelt between her thighs and she made soft sounds that might have been a name and might have been a sob, but she was dryfaced when he kissed her again, and she thanked him and held him on top of her for a time he could not measure.  
___

At the cafe he readjusted the seat and closed the door after she was in the driver's seat and told her to drive safe and she said that she would.

She said that she thought it must have meant something that they should meet today of all days, and that she'd keep him in her prayers. Then he watched her pull out of the lot and disappear into the haze and the dust. At the edge of the lot the Impala waited for him in the shade.  
___

A few years later he'd find her again, bring her flowers, remember what she said about a body unable to rest in that ground. Then he'd salt her bones and burn them and say goodbye.


End file.
